Healthy food access in Appalachia – summary video!

By: Alexandria Polanosky

Over the months leading up to this past winter, I was given the opportunity to work with CAN and their many partner organizations across the Appalachian region to highlight the work they are doing to improve healthy food access in their communities. I captured these initiatives through a number of short videos, each highlighting a different project described in recently completed case studies conducted and published by CAN and the Appalachian Funders Network. These highlighted initiatives included Berea Kids Eat, Farmacy, Farm to Institution to School, Healthy Families — Family Farms and My Mobile Market.

A colleague from the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks and I traveled throughout Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio to capture the passion of those doing the work as well as the impact it’s having on the surrounding community. I filmed the food access work in action and conducted interviews with the organizers of the projects, stakeholders and recipients. Video has always been one of my favorite mediums for storytelling as the combination of moving images and audio often produces the most emotional and memorable response. Hopefully these videos will help to highlight the beauty and resilience of these communities as well as empower other organizations to do similar work.

Below is a summary video of the Healthy Food Access case studies. Be sure to check back here in the coming weeks, as we’ll be sharing the short video and written case study for each of the featured healthy food access projects!